


i should be good (but i fell apart)

by neufheures



Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 20:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neufheures/pseuds/neufheures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sungyeol's new partner is an old, MX-47 model android named Myungsoo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i should be good (but i fell apart)

**Author's Note:**

> Almost Human!AU.
> 
> The show hasn't started yet when I wrote and first published this so I gathered information from the trailers and http://www.meetyourmx.com/
> 
> In the show, the MX series is the new androids, while the old series is called the DRN series but in this fic, MX is the fixed name for all police androids. If this story was to be in the actual show, Myungsoo would be a DRN series. Two scenes were inspired by Common Law and CSI: NY. Title taken from I've Tried Everything by Eurythmics.
> 
> Also, this features a romantic relationship between a human and a robot so if you're not comfortable with that...

Looking out the window, Sungyeol was, for once, glad he was inside Doctor Kim Jungah's office. The storm was raging outside, all he could see were white, white, and specks of black and silver and blue and yellow moving swiftly across the road. He landed his vision on a potted plant by the window and remembered a question she had asked him when he was still trying to get comfortable on the couch. He'd found the answer. Twenty minutes late, but an answer nonetheless.

"What I don't look forward to is nothing." The question was, "What do you not look forward in going back to work?" and Sungyeol obviously had something that popped into his mind the first time. But the way he saw it, being in therapy was only an obstacle in getting his job back, and saying the true answer would only prolong the process, so he chose the safest one. Why it took almost half an hour to come up, he guessed it must've been the storm. He never functioned well in storms.

Doctor Kim Jungah looked up from the paper she had been reading, and Sungyeol counted that it took her exactly one second before she got it.

"How come?" She put the paper on a clipboard placed on her crossed legs.

Sungyeol shook his leg out of habit, looking at the potted plant once more as if it held up all his answers on a cue card. Sungyeol sensed that she knew he was lying so he put on his most calmed expression, his brain telling his leg to stop shaking.

"I've seen too much murder reports and no actual body these two months. Honestly, I'll recite cap's daily affirmations with her if it means I get my job back."

.

"Well, you seem all right."

Sungyeol beamed, reassuring the captain that he was better than all right. He had always been all right. He never felt otherwise. Although, the captain disagreed since three months ago. Also, she hadn't looked at him since he stepped into her office.

"Doctor Kim also said you're qualified to go back." Her eyes moved quickly across the paper in her hands, faxed early in the morning by Doctor Kim Jungah. Sungyeol nodded, eager to get this over with.

"Okay, then," the captain plopped down on her seat to write what seemed to be a memo before giving it to Sungyeol. "Bring this to the garage. Your cases should be on your desk by then."

Among the messy scribbles his boss liked to call "her handwriting", Sungyeol caught "need" and "MX". His grip on the paper tightened, crumpling the edge, as he smiled nervously at the captain.

"See, cap, this is the thing that I wanted to talk to you about."

"You prefer working with people, I know."

Sungyeol froze. He never said that to anyone. Not to Doctor Kim, not to his friends, certainly not to the captain. Sungyeol whistled inwardly. Man, Doctor Kim was good.

"I'm sorry, but MX's are a requirement now. It's either that, or back to desk jobs."

Sungyeol gritted his teeth. He disliked how a piece of robot could actually control his whole career. If he couldn't (refused to) ride with one while doing what he had wanted to do for so long, he would be stripped of his badge and gun, glued to his chair doing paperwork. If there was one thing he disliked other than MX, it was paperwork.

"I understand, ma'am," he finally answered. He would find a silver lining, hopefully.

.

The garage had not changed since the last time he stepped into it three years ago, except it looked like they doubled the amount of MX stored there. Sungyeol scruffed his shoe on the cement floor, waiting for another cop to finish talking to The Professor. See, he had a name but more than half of the 17th precinct forgot so they'd been calling him The Professor even before Sungyeol joined the precinct. Come to think of it, Sungyeol had never actually heard his name.

"Can I help you?"

Sungyeol looked up from his shoes to find the old man—gray beard, probably fifty-something—staring at him, as if getting him to talk. Sungyeol moved a step closer and handed him the memo, along with small introduction of, "I'm Lee Sungyeol. Captain sent me here." The Professor read the memo in Sungyeol's outreached hand (he didn't even take it) before getting up from his seat. With a, "This way," Sungyeol trailed behind him in slow steps.

They walked between dozens of racks, with hundreds of dress covers containing what should be androids but Sungyeol didn't see any. Hundreds of dress covers, each hanging by something that looked like metal clothes hangers, and all of them empty. At the end of the garage, the professor halted his steps, a few feet in front of Sungyeol. The latter stepped closer when the professor began unzipping a cover with "MX-47" printed on it, revealing a humanoid with the most lively eyes Sungyeol had ever seen on a robot. He had never seen any robot with eyes less empty than his unfilled kitchen drawer.

"This is an old model, but still clears for active duty," the professor started, pushing on a button planted on the wall next to him, getting a machine to pick the robot out and bring it to an autopsy table not far from there. Sungyeol raised an eyebrow. Old? "They've stopped producing MX-47 since five years ago."

Well that didn't sit well with Sungyeol.

"So you're giving me an antique, limited edition MX?" In an instant, hundreds of what ifs popped into his head. What if it had virus? What if it went rampage? What if it shot him for no reason? What if it blew up in his face?

"It still works fine. Relax, boy," the professor plugged in a cable into the android's nape and proceeded to type on his computer before turning back to the robot. "They've stopped producing it because, you know, new innovations. Like cars."

Still, it could blow up anytime. Sungyeol drummed his fingers on the metal table, and only stopping when the old man glared at him. "It's not gonna blow up in my face, right?"

The professor sighed loudly. "He's old but he's not a time bomb." He watched his computer screen showing the progress of moving data into the robot. "It has bugs, of course, but it's not something for you to be concerned about."

Hearing that it wouldn't blow up reassured Sungyeol a bit, so he tried poking the android's hand and was surprised to find it more tender than his previous MX. Or any other MX's he had touched. His eyes landed on its open, empty (but still livelier than any of its kind) ones, staring at the high ceiling of the garage. Its skin was smoother than normal human (top quality airbrush, of course) and fairer than Sungyeol's.

The funny thing was, the robot was equipped with normal human shirt and jeans and a blazer instead of the combat uniforms he had seen on every MX on the street. That was probably why he felt like he had never seen an old MX before: because they dressed like normal human.

He heard the professor saying, "Done," but he heard late so when the android woke up with a loud gasp, Sungyeol almost jumped back. He didn't remember this part about new androids.

"Oh, his name is Myungsoo."

Sungyeol watched as the robot sat up and glanced at the professor before turning to Sungyeol. Immediately recognizing him as his human, he extended his hand for a handshake. "Hi, I'm Myungsoo and I'll be your partner." Sungyeol found his talking less of a robot and more of a waiter, but still impressive. His previous MX was stiff as hell.

Sungyeol didn't accept Myungsoo's invitation for a handshake and instead asked the professor, "MX's have names then?"

"Yes, kind of like your toy."

What. He looked down and saw that Myungsoo's hand was still extended and he felt kind of bad so he shook its hand. "We're off. Let's go, synthetic." It just rolled out of his tongue out of habit, synthetic. Almost every cop he knew called their android partner "synthetic", it was normal.

"I would appreciate it if you do not call me that."

Sungyeol, having already walked away, looked back towards Myungsoo, finding Myungsoo's stare too hard even for a robot. "It can talk back?" he asked the professor, who only shrugged.

"I can talk back if I have to," Myungsoo answered for him, gaze never leaving Sungyeol's. Sungyeol glared at the robot, squinting his eyes. He was beginning to be annoyed by Myungsoo and it hadn't even been turned on for five minutes. He took a deep breath before looking away. He would finally be back doing what he had applied to do in the first place and he was not going to let a piece of robot dampen his excitement. "Whatever. Let's go."

Myungsoo didn't move. Only after Sungyeol exited the garage did it jump off the table and walked out. It figured it would find Sungyeol in his desk. If not, then it only needed to ask people.

Entering the precinct lobby, Myungsoo almost bumped into a big guy in handcuffs looking for Sungyeol's table. Fortunately, it's near the exit, and Myungsoo easily found him sitting on his desk, flipping through a stack of papers inside a folder, once in a while looking up to answer his colleagues' greetings and felicitations for getting back on the field. Myungsoo walked up to him when Sungyeol was closing the folder.

"You still haven't apologized for earlier," was the first thing Myungsoo said when it stopped in front of Sungyeol. The human looked up and rolled his eyes.

"Why are you being so sensitive?" He didn't even know robots could be sensitive. "We call MX's 'synthetic' and they don't mind."

Myungsoo opened its mouth but shut it as soon as Sungyeol took his suit jacket off of his chair. Since Sungyeol didn't seem too eager to hear his answer, it might as well not say it.

"If you really wanted to know," Myungsoo said when they were in the parking lot, over screeching of multiple car breaks. "It's on page three of the manual."

Sungyeol looked at it incredulously before unlocking his car and got in, Myungsoo following suit. The android took a while before finally finding a comfortable position in the passenger seat. "You all right?" Sungyeol asked, watching Myungsoo putting on its seat belt.

"Yeah," Myungsoo nodded.

Sungyeol started the engine and dumped the manila folder he had been reading earlier onto Myungsoo's lap. "Make yourself useful and read it."

Myungsoo glanced at the label on the cover and turned to Sungyeol. "This is your old case," it stated.

"I have eight open cases. You should know that." Myungsoo did know. It just thought that they would receive a new one. So Myungsoo opened the folder and flipped through the papers, finding nothing that hadn't been put into its hard drive before it came to the last piece. It picked it out, interested.

"New lead," Sungyeol said, turning left on an intersection. "They found shreds of a beer bottle next to a dumpster fifty feet away from the body. Blood matches the vic, got a hit on the fingerprints." All these done within his three months leave from field work.

.

The daughter of the suspect cooperated in letting them in, it was just the suspect didn't. Three stories above the ground never scared Sungyeol, so he chased him, going out of the window and onto the fire escape. Myungsoo, on the other hand, went down the normal stairs, all the while calculating how much the fire escape could delay the perp's movements (if he was being careful). Shoving the back door open, it ran straight into the perp, pushing him against the wall. A second later, Sungyeol jumped off the last ladder.

"Nice, synthetic," Sungyeol praised as Myungsoo put handcuffs around the suspect's wrists. He then pointed at the suspect. "You, not so nice."

.

They had been grilling him for a confession or any information for over two hours and all the suspect could say was, "I was drunk." What a neat way of avoiding; blame it on the alcohol. So Sungyeol told an officer to bring him to a holding cell and keep him there.

When he and Myungsoo arrived at his desk, someone he didn't recognize was sitting on one of the chairs, a tall box standing next to him.

"Can I help you?" Sungyeol approached the guy and he stood up, pulling off his cap.

"You're Detective Lee Sungyeol?" Once Sungyeol nodded, confusedly, the guy offered him a board with a piece of paper. "Please sign this."

"What..." Sungyeol's eyes immediately went to the upper left corner of the paper, a logo he recognized catching his attention. "Why are you dropping it off here? Who is this from?" He circled the tall cardboard box on a hand truck and finally noticed the logo of a delivery company on the back.

The delivery guy pointed at the paper, where the name of the sender was printed. "Who's Professor Shim?" Sungyeol turned to Myungsoo, who obviously overheard but pretended it didn't. "Hey, synthetic. Who's Professor—wait, his name is Shim?"

Myungsoo slowly nodded. "You didn't know his name?"

"Well, we always call him The Professor," Sungyeol answered, much to himself. "So why did he send me this thing?"

"Detective, please sign—"

"No, I'm not gonna sign until I know what's going on."

"But, detective—"

"Wait here." With that, Sungyeol bolted out the door for the garage.

.

"What is that thing standing in my desk?"

The Professor turned around, looking like it was expected of Sungyeol to barge in and ask that question. He had an answer prepared, of course. "It's Myungsoo's charger booth."

"Why is it in a box and delivered to my desk?"

"You're gonna take it home with you."

"'It'? Which 'it'?"

"We're talking about the charger, kid. But you're gonna bring Myungsoo home with you, too."

It took Sungyeol a whole minute to process, and another minute to finally came up with a soft, "Excuse me?"

"Myungsoo's coming home with you."

"Why?"

"We don't have enough space to store MX's overnight anymore so let me inform you of a new regulation: all old MX's until MX model 48 that are still working will be kept at their partners' house." The professor proceeded to take a piece of laminated paper and shoved it in Sungyeol's face. NEW REGULATION, the title read, and the professor had recited the content well, word for word.

"I don't care if you have enough space or not. I am not bringing it home!"

"Give me one good reason why."

"Because I do not want to."

"Not good enough. You are bringing the charger and Myungsoo home. You don't have to feed it or anything anyway, it's not a pet."

Sungyeol felt like telling him off to the captain, but then remembered that she was the one who signed over the new regulation. He didn't see how he could get out of this so he loudly exhaled, to remind the professor that he was not at all happy about this, before storming off.

When he got back to his desk, the delivery guy was gone, and Myungsoo was standing next to the box, caressing and lightly knocking on it.

"Where's the delivery guy?" Sungyeol asked cautiously. Myungsoo flicked on the box.

"He's gone. He couldn't wait for you so I signed the paper."

Sungyeol's eyes widened in shock and frantically searched around the room, trying to locate the guy and find out if Myungsoo was lying or not at the same time. When he couldn't find the guy, he jerked Myungsoo closer by its arm. "Why did you do that? That's forgery."

Myungsoo raised an eyebrow at Sungyeol's grip on its arm. "Your signature's in my head." Myungsoo shrugged Sungyeol's hand away. "It's just a delivery. He had other places to go."

"But..." Sungyeol plopped down on his chair as Myungsoo took a seat where the delivery guy was occupying earlier and started playing with a baseball bobblehead on Sungyeol's desk. "But I'm gonna be stuck with you."

Myungsoo's hand stopped pushing on the head and it bumped into its synthetic nail. "What do you mean by 'stuck'?"

Sungyeol pointed at the box behind him, standing straight and absolute as if mocking him that no, never gonna make me disappear. "What do you think this means?"

Myungsoo didn't get what he meant so he looked inside the box (bio-imaging, but he had heard earlier that the humans around Sungyeol's desk liked to call it "x-ray vision", which was not false) and saw his charger booth inside of it.

Oh.

.

Three and a half hours later, Myungsoo was standing by Sungyeol's car, trying to maneuver a 6 feet cardboard box into the backseat. Sungyeol told Myungsoo since it was "Your charger, so you deal with it yourself." Myungsoo sighed as it forced the box to dive into the trunk via the backseat. It was all very complicated, but Myungsoo finally managed to close the door and not thrust the box into Sungyeol's headrest.

"Why didn't you have a portable charger? Like cellphones," Sungyeol asked exasperatedly when Myungsoo had put on his seat belt.

"Then it would take a week for me to get recharged."

It was another struggle getting the charger into Sungyeol's apartment. Walking up the second set of stairs, he had already considered moving into a vacant place on the ground floor. By the third and last set, he was about ready to collapse because _man, this thing is probably heavier than my fridge_ _._ He took a peek at his partner, only to be annoyed because it didn't even break a sweat.

Sungyeol thought about dropping the box carelessly on the floor as soon as they stepped into his place, but the captain and the professor would probably murder him so he gently put it down by the glass door in the living room.

"My place. Welcome." He had never had someone (or something) who actually moved into his apartment so if there was actually a special greeting for that occasion, then he apologized.

Myungsoo glanced around and took in what its bare vision could see; the tiny balcony, the cream couch, the green rug placed haphazardly on the floor, the dark kitchen, the flickering light in the doorway, and it all summed up to a nod. "We should unpack this."

So they did. When they had finally gotten the charger booth out of the box, Sungyeol noticed a post-it note stuck on what seemed to be a door. He took it just as Myungsoo was placing the empty box in the corner of the room and he read it out loud.

"'Page 3 of the manual is where you should start.'" Sungyeol looked up from the note. "What's with page 3 anyway? Does it contain spells or something?"

He was answered with a light shove from Myungsoo. He was about to yell when he realized that he was standing on the green rug and Myungsoo was just trying to tidy it. Sungyeol pursed his lips. Maybe he could make Myungsoo clean his place.

"Page 3 is the first page of the manual," Myungsoo crawled to plug the charger into an electrical socket behind it. "I'm gonna recharge first. Good night, Sungyeol." Myungsoo pushed on a button and the door of the booth opened (it _was_ a door). Myungsoo gave him a small smile before stepping into it. Sungyeol watched in amazement as the light inside the booth dimmed slowly and he could see a cable moving and plugging itself into Myungsoo's nape and he realized that Myungsoo already had its eyes closed. It was a bit disturbing, but cool.

Sungyeol was tired but he wasn't ready for bed yet so he snatched the manual from the floor (he must've dropped it earlier) and went straight to the third page. Page 3 didn't have anything that resembled a spell, but he had to read it so he read on.

Page 3 contained a list of specifications an MX-47 had that lasted until page 5, but Sungyeol didn't take much time to finally found something that piqued his interest, placed on number one in the list as if it was the most important thing (it was). _OPERATES WITH SYNTHETIC SOUL SOFTWARE ✓_

.

Sungyeol dreamed of his parents' house, his old bedroom, when the dream version of himself heard a knock on the door, then another, then another. Dream Sungyeol realized they weren't from his universe so he started fading for a second before eventually, it was all blank, waking Sungyeol up. There was another knock.

He sniffed and slowly walked towards the door, opening it to reveal Myungsoo, balled up fist hanging in the air.

"What?" Sungyeol asked, his voice still rough from sleep.

"It's 5 AM. Time for you to get up."

Sungyeol looked behind him at the bedside clock, its green light forming "05:05". He looked back at Myungsoo. "You're not my alarm. My alarm doesn't ring until 5:25."

"I predict the traffic's going to be bad today, since there will be a mayoral campaign at 10 AM." Myungsoo walked away and Sungyeol considered going back to bed but then the android turned around, looking sharply at him, and stood in the middle of the hallway. Just standing there, staring at Sungyeol.

So Sungyeol stared back. Except his mind also went back to page 3 of the manual, first specification on the list. Is that why they stopped producing MX-47? Sungyeol asked himself inwardly, but was surprised by Myungsoo's sudden "Yes" and for a second thought that older MX's could actually read minds.

"I'm sorry?" Sungyeol asked, standing straight at the threshold.

"Yes, that is exactly why they stopped producing MX-47," Myungsoo nodded, but then added, "The question you asked earlier?" when he saw Sungyeol was still looking at him all confused.

"Oh." He didn't realize he had asked that out loud. "So you're the last one equipped with the software?" he asked softly.

Myungsoo nodded once again. "MX-48 onwards don't operate with that."

Sungyeol's previous MX was an MX-49. He had probably found out why Myungsoo had livelier eyes than his successors, why he seemed sensitive that time. Sungyeol had worked well with his MX-49 before and that was perhaps because it wasn't equipped with synthetic _feelings_.

"Meh, I don't like you anyway," Sungyeol blurted out. A nice way to start a morning.

.

Riding with MX's was never fun. Sometimes they would start commenting on every single mistake their humans did in their last interrogation, or correcting their driving styles. Sungyeol had experienced both with his last MX but none so far with Myungsoo.

Myungsoo had been pretty much silent throughout the day; standing in the corner of the interrogation room, examining a suspect's trashed apartment without a word, only nodding whenever Sungyeol turned to him for back up. He didn't like riding with a walking law book but he also didn't like riding with a statue.

An apology was also long overdue.

"Hey," Sungyeol started, however still keeping his eyes on the road because Myungsoo was still an MX after all. "I'm sorry about this morning. I shouldn't have said that."

Myungsoo looked down at the door handle by Sungyeol's side. "It's all right." He looked back up with a sigh at the dashboard. "You were just trying not to get attached to me. I get it."

"What?" Sungyeol's radio suddenly buzzed, the dispatch informing of a stolen car a few blocks away from where they were. Even before Sungyeol had finished responding, Myungsoo had switched on the siren. Right after the dispatcher told him that they had copied, Sungyeol asked again, "What?"

"Come on, you freaked out!" Myungsoo exclaimed. "You thought working with me will be like working with your previous android, then it turns out I have feelings and it scared you. It did scare you, didn't it?"

When he lost his last MX, he didn't mourn. Why mourn over a rigid tin man? Now that he had an MX who dressed and talked and acted like a human being with feelings actually installed, he felt conflicted. He did say he preferred working with people. Now he wanted to retract that statement. Come to think of it, he'd been so used to working with robots that he would have no idea what to do if, God forbid, something happened to Myungsoo.

No wonder the department decommissioned them.

Sungyeol preferred not to answer Myungsoo. "You know what? Since we're going to be glued together 24/7, we should get to know each other." He thought this was it, the silver lining, he eventually found it. He wasn't partnered with a soulless robot dressed up as riot police, he was partnered with an almost human.

"Okay," Myungsoo answered with a curt nod.

"Let's play 20 questions."

Myungsoo stared at him in disbelieve. "Sungyeol, we are in pursuit."

"Yeah. They're heading northwest and—hey, watch it!—if they're making a big escape, they'll be heading for the highway. But—" He paused to honk. "—the entrance of the northwest highway is closed down right now and will not be opened until next month." He took a turn towards a shortcut. When they exited, the entrance of the highway was right in front of them, closed for constructions.

"You're really sure about this?"

"Absolutely," Sungyeol answered confidently.

The car was silent once again so Sungyeol turned to Myungsoo to start asking questions when he noticed the robot looking at the sky, his eyes absent of any emotion. It reminded Sungyeol of other MX's.

"Synthetic?"

"You're right," Myungsoo tore his gaze off of the sky, pretending he didn't hear Sungyeol calling him. "They're heading towards the northwest highway."

Oh, so he was looking at the public surveillence tapes. Sungyeol leaned back into his seat, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. "So, synthetic." When Myungsoo glared at him, he actually gulped. "I mean Myungsoo. Question 1: What's it like to be shut down?"

The silence Myungsoo took to form an answer was filled with a loud screech of a car and a crash after that. They both turned around to find a yellow sports car, its hood bent out of shape after colliding with two concrete barriers. Sungyeol cringed.

"I wouldn't know because I was, you know, dead," Myungsoo finally gave an answer after the suspect was apprehended. Sungyeol's nod made him grin, and the android proceeded. "My turn."

.

For the rest of the shift, between knocking on suspects' doors and interrogating them, Sungyeol and Myungsoo asked each other questions. Sungyeol didn't have that many things to ask Myungsoo because he'd only been turned on for two days, but Myungsoo had a lot to ask him, things that were not in his profile installed into his head.

"What do you wanna do if you were a human?" Sungyeol asked as he was parking his car.

Having already thought of this, Myungsoo answered right away, "Do normal human stuff."

Sungyeol pulled on the hand brake. "What normal human stuff?"

Myungsoo shrugged and took off his seat belt. "Eat, take a sho—hey, that's two questions."

Sungyeol laughed. He turned off the headlight and should probably turn off the engine, too, but he didn't want to endure three flights of stairs just yet. "Your turn."

"What happened with Jang Dongwoo?"

Sungyeol froze. That name, the name he wanted to avoid so much, not because he hated it but because it made him feel guilty. He was doing great; three months in therapy talking about anything other than that. If they really had to, Doctor Kim Jungah would not say his name, and he appreciated that.

Myungsoo was looking at him, waiting for him to say something. When all Sungyeol did was stare at the AC button, Myungsoo spoke again, "I know what's written in the database, but it's a bit vague."

Sungyeol looked up at Myungsoo's eyes; they were determined. He sighed. He should probably talk about it. If he was going to talk about this tonight, Myungsoo would be the first one to actually hear it. He never really trusted his therapist, so she only knew what was written in his file. It covered the gist of the story anyway.

"There was a raid three months ago," Sungyeol finally started. Myungsoo noticed his right hand was knocking on his lap, a sign of nervousness. "A drug cartel responsible for killing 23 people was leaving their hideout so we paid them a little visit."

Myungsoo slowly nodded, urging him to go on. In a situation similar to this, Sungyeol would be annoyed by now. But he realized he had to talk to someone otherwise he would just bottle it up. "Dongwoo was next to me. Despite wearing bulletproof vest, he still got shot in the neck."

Myungsoo did read that in Jang Dongwoo's file. The bullet hit his carotid artery.

"So we hid behind a squad car and I called my MX to get a diagnosis. The bullet was lodged right here," he pointed to a spot on his neck and Myungsoo, with bio-imaging, recognized it as, indeed, where the carotid artery was.

"I told my MX to help but it said, and I quote, "His chance of survival is 20% and it keeps lowering." It basically said Dongwoo was a lost cause."

Myungsoo wanted to say that with such an injury, he was a lost cause. But he kept his mouth shut as Sungyeol continued, "And then a few seconds later, my MX got shot with that... thing."

Myungsoo knew "the thing". It was an illegal, giant shotgun that shot 600 rounds per minute. The file said it was made entirely by the cartel. It had only been used once in that raid and it was said to have hit a human cop as well. No wonder Sungyeol was in therapy.

"When the paramedics arrived, the only thing they could do was pronounce him dead."

Sungyeol had stopped knocking on his lap, focusing his attention on the steering wheel. The whirr of the engine was beginning to sound too loud for him, so he turned to Myungsoo. "The end," he softly announced.

"I'm so sorry," Myungsoo said without missing a beat. "I shouldn't have asked you that."

"No, it's fine." He waved it off. He had to let it out anyway. "I actually felt happy that my MX got shot. It was like, "Hey, screw you for not helping my dying best friend," and then BANG!" He collided his fists together. "It got shot."

Despite what he said, Myungsoo knew that Sungyeol wasn't quite relieved after telling him. He wanted to ask further but he was afraid of offending him, so he just turned off the AC. "Let's go upstairs."

The android opened the door and was ready to get out of the car when Sungyeol admitted, "You're the first one that I've told this story to."

Myungsoo, right leg already out of the car, turned back around to stare at Sungyeol, wordlessly asking whether it was true, to which Sungyeol nodded.

"Oh, um..." MX's weren't designed to be tongue-tied, but in that moment, he felt like a failed product. He licked his lips as he tried to come up with something and the most appropriate one was, "Thank you," so he said it.

The side of Sungyeol's mouth quirked upward, his hand went to pat Myungsoo on the back before finally turning off the engine. "Let's go upstairs."

Both of them were glad the game was over.

.

Saturday arrived, and Sungyeol woke up, confused, at 10 AM. Having woken up with knocks on his door for four days consecutively, he wondered whether Myungsoo had tried to wake him up but failed. Or maybe his built-in alarm didn't ring on weekends.

Sungyeol found him in the living room, looking out the balcony. His back was turned to Sungyeol but he still managed to say, "Good morning."

"Morning." Sungyeol scratched on his tummy and opened the fridge. Running out of milk. "You don't go off on weekends?"

Myungsoo turned to him and shook his head. "No, unless I set it first."

This new information that Sungyeol could actually told Myungsoo to set his built-in alarm to 6:25 AM intrigued him, but he was too hungry to even consider doing it yet.

"What're you gonna do today?"

Myungsoo looked around the living room and Sungyeol hoped the robot was thinking of cleaning up the place. "Read, maybe." Sungyeol's shoulders dropped.

"Read what?"

"Your books."

"Good luck with that," he whispered. Sungyeol only had books that he read when he was in the academy and they were all police-related books. He had no novels, only had 'Improving Motivation and Morale - A Police Leader's Guide' as a motivation book and his mother's cooking book in his shelf. If Myungsoo was looking for a "human" read, then he'd recommend the cooking book.

Myungsoo walked up to him and took a seat in the bar stool across from Sungyeol, who was eating his mountain of cereal without milk. Myungsoo stared at the bowl, questioning, because according to a data Myungsoo found inside the "Everyday" folder in his hard drive, humans were supposed to eat cereal with milk.

Sensing that his partner was looking at him, he looked up (and found out that he was looking at the bowl instead). "I ran out of milk. See?" He tilted his bowl to show Myungsoo how there was only little milk at the bottom.

"Why don't you just cook, then?"

"Too lazy. Lunch is in two hours anyway." While thinking of where to eat lunch, he studied Myungsoo. The robot was as clean as ever, looking very refreshed after charging overnight. Sungyeol's only concerned was that he only had one outfit and that was what he was wearing.

"Don't you wanna get out of that blazer?" And shirt. Was there a shop that sold special MX clothes?

Myungsoo looked down at his attire; human jeans and a white shirt under a black blazer. He didn't see anything wrong with it, but he understood if Sungyeol was subtly telling him that his clothes were dirty and need to be washed.

"I kind of do."

.

After lunch (he finally settled on noodles), Sungyeol got out a shirt he hadn't worn since he graduated from the academy. It was a class shirt, a size too big on him because he ticked on its box just in case (his mother's principle that unfortunately had seeped into him) but would probably fit him right now. Not that he got chubbier after the academy. It looked pitiful when Sungyeol pulled it out from the very bottom of his stack of t-shirts. He also got out a pair of training pants.

Then he remembered he had a wedding to attend tonight.

After Myungsoo was done changing and was returning to the living room, he stopped in front of Sungyeol's room and saw that the guy was buttoning one of the cuffs of a dress shirt he was already wearing. Myungsoo stood at the threshold, watching him.

"Looking sharp," Myungsoo commented. Sungyeol turned to him and smiled, his hand reaching for a tie placed on his study desk. "Where are you going?"

"A colleague of mine is getting married this evening. I'm going to pick up a couple of friends first." He looked at the tie hanging on his neck before flipping it. He only got to pulling the side of it before turning completely to Myungsoo. "A little help? I've never done this without my mom."

Myungsoo noticed that it was a bow tie. While making his way to Sungyeol, he was already searching for instructions on the internet, because he knew none of the folders had any. Standing in front of Sungyeol and his sad, limp tie, his hands went to both ends of his tie, and stopped to read the instructions.

Sungyeol watched as he slowly crossed the ends and pulled and folded the tie into an actual bow tie. It took longer than his mother, but at least it was a bow tie. Myungsoo blinked and took a step backward, looking like he was admiring his work.

"Thanks, Myungsoo," he smiled at the MX before adjusting his gelled up hair. He watched through the mirror as Myungsoo went to a book shelf behind him, one that was rather empty of any book because Sungyeol used it to keep his DVD collection. The android reached for a book, before stopping, seeming like he was contemplating (but Sungyeol could only see his back so he wouldn't know) before pulling out the one next to it. Somehow, Sungyeol was reminded of his fridge.

"Hey, you wanna do normal human stuff?" Sungyeol asked as he got out a suit jacket from his wardrobe. Myungsoo almost dropped the book in his hands turning around. Sungyeol reached for his wallet next to a stack of paper on the desk. "Can you buy me a gallon of milk like the one I had? Thanks."

Myungsoo blinked up at him. He did know what Sungyeol's milk was, but he only saw the carton version of it. He figured if the convenient store downstairs didn't have any of it in gallon form, he could buy the carton one. With that thought in his head, he took the money from Sungyeol's hand.

Sungyeol told him about the convenient store downstairs but Myungsoo had to cut him because he knew about it already and proceeded to ask him, "Wouldn't you arrive too early? It's still 1:47 PM." Sungyeol shook his head and said that the venue was at the other side of the city and he had to pick up three other friends, not to mention the traffic.

They got out of the apartment at the same time, and Sungyeol let Myungsoo lock the door with the spare key he gave him the other day. They separated at the main door; Sungyeol going left to the carpark and Myungsoo going right to the convenient store. Out of habit, Sungyeol waved his partner goodbye. Programmed to respond, Myungsoo waved back.

.

Myungsoo spent the day reading Sungyeol's academy books, all four of them. They were not too thick so by what Sungyeol called "Dinnertime" he was already looking around for something else to do. He decided to tidy the living room up, and when he was done, he moved onto the kitchen, then the bathroom, then the doorway. He didn't clean, he just tidied up.

It only took him two hours. He glanced at his charger booth. He would normally be in it by this time, but he wasn't feeling low. Then he remembered about Sungyeol's DVD collection.

Myungsoo was staring at the credit roll of a movie he'd just watched (quite intently) when he heard the sound of the door being unlocked. He looked at the clock and was surprised to find the shorter needle pointing to one. He had never stayed out this late without charging. He quickly turned off the tv and sat upright to greet Sungyeol when he heard other voice he didn't recognize speaking in hushed tones.

Myungsoo was ready to get up from the couch and see what was going on when Sungyeol finally emerged from behind the wall separating the doorway and the kitchen, and he wasn't alone. Myungsoo watched as Sungyeol pushed someone up against a wall, giggling in between intakes of breath.

They were like that for 15 seconds (Myungsoo did count) before the guy on the wall noticed him on the couch and peeled his face away from Sungyeol's.

"Your MX lives here?" Having shown his face, Myungsoo finally recognized him as Nam Woohyun, another detective whose desk was across from Sungyeol's. He was almost always at Sungyeol's desk before their shift was over.

Sungyeol looked back at Myungsoo; sitting straight on the couch with his eyes wide in curiousity. Sungyeol cleared his throat and a "yes" came out. "You know what?" Sungyeol pushed himself away from Nam Woohyun. "I just remember I have a lot of work to do, so..."

"Oh, yeah, it's fine." Woohyun didn't seem to be disappointed as he nodded his head in understanding.

Myungsoo's eyes followed the two of them until they disappeared behind the wall. After the familiar click of the lock, Sungyeol returned, and was kind of only standing between the wall and the living room, looking at Myungsoo.

"Why are you not in the booth yet?" he asked, making his way to the couch before plopping down next to Myungsoo, heaving a sigh.

"My battery isn't low yet." Besides, tomorrow was Sunday. He could charge anytime he wanted (before the battery ran out, of course, because if that happened, he wouldn't be able to move).

"What were you doing all day?"

"I read your books, I tidied up the apartment," Myungsoo pointed to the green rug below them. Sungyeol didn't look. "I watched some movies, too."

Sungyeol glanced at him. "What movies?"

Myungsoo held up five DVD cases, all of which contained the words "DIE HARD" at some point of the title. "I just finished this one when you got home," Myungsoo held up another case. This one caught Sungyeol's eyes because it was of three people standing in front of a white background, and because he didn't remember he had that.

"'Sixteen Candles'? That's my mom's," Sungyeol snatched the case from Myungsoo's hands to examine it. "What is this doing here?" he mumbled.

"I like it, though. It's good."

"It is?"

Myungsoo nodded, and then silence came. Sungyeol shook his leg, Myungsoo watched the clock, both waiting for the other to say something. When Sungyeol inhaled deeply and got up from the couch, it was at the same time as Myungsoo saying, "Now my battery's low."

Sungyeol blinked at him. "Right. Good night," he murmured before stumbling towards the bedroom.

Myungsoo waited until Sungyeol had closed the bedroom door before stepping into his charging booth. He didn't plug any cable into him.

.

After eight days working on old cases, Sungyeol's captain handed him a new one. Within a few minutes, Sungyeol and Myungsoo were inside the crime scene tape wrapped around tress in the park; Sungyeol interviewing the girl who found the body, Myungsoo looking around for evidence.

Myungsoo found an evidence and as he was bagging it, he looked up at an apartment building across the park. Something caught his eyes, so he zoomed in on a window on the seventh floor. He didn't mean to watch, but ever since Sixteen Candles, he became more curious of people and their level of affection.

He blinked up at a man and a woman, spinning around near the window (Myungsoo guessed they were dancing) before the woman leaned up to kiss the man, and Myungsoo couldn't help but smile as the two broke away and laughed.

When he looked back down right after that, he began to wonder.

.

Myungsoo was idling in front of his charging booth that night when he finally asked, "What's it like to be kissed?"

Sungyeol, who was flipping through his bills, almost dropped them in surprise. He stared at Myungsoo, eventually concluded the android wasn't joking, before dumping the bills and all other envelopes onto the couch.

"What?" was the only respond Sungyeol could muster.

"It's nice, isn't it?" Myungsoo asked again. "Does it feel cold and refreshing like rain, or like a preheated oven?"

Sungyeol frowned, suppressing a laugh. Myungsoo had a way with words. "Neither. Why'd you asked?"

"Curious," Myungsoo shrugged. "I have almost two gigabyte worth of files about summer bugs yet I can't find anything about kisses other than the definition."

"Well, it's different," Sungyeol said as he got up from the couch. Myungsoo raised his eyebrows, intrigued. For a minute, Sungyeol just stood in front of Myungsoo, searching for the right words to describe it. It was certainly not like the rain, let alone a preheated oven. Myungsoo blinked at him, waiting, and Sungyeol's frown deepened after every word he crossed out of his head.

"I can't really describe it in words," Sungyeol finally said. "But..."

Myungsoo was going to ask about the continuation of his sentence but decided not to when he saw Sungyeol's hand hesistantly moved towards his jaw, cupping it. Myungsoo didn't know how to kiss, but he wasn't stupid, he just reacted a little late. When Sungyeol finally leaned in and kissed him, Myungsoo's first reaction was to close his eyes, and it wasn't because he had seen it in movies and people around him but because it felt _so good_ that he wanted to savor it.

Myungsoo counted four seconds before Sungyeol pulled away, slowly. He opened his eyes and felt like he needed to say something, but Sungyeol beat him to it.

"It's different, isn't it?" he whispered, his hand trailing down Myungsoo's jaw to his neck.

It _was_ different, Myungsoo wanted to say. It felt nothing like the rain. It felt like the air was knocked out of him and left him feeling dizzy and almost tumbling to the ground. It didn't sound very nice in his head but Myungsoo liked this feeling. He wished to have it again, he wanted to say, but all that came out of his mouth was a soft, "Yeah."

Sungyeol gulped and retreated his hand completely. "Guess I'll see you tomorrow. Good night, Myungsoo."

Myungsoo could only nod.

He kept his eyes open for the rest of the night, trying not to let the feeling slip out of his head.

.

They didn't talk about it the next morning. Or the next. Or the next. They never talked about it. Myungsoo wondered whether this was naturally something people don't talk about. Sungyeol didn't act all that different than he was before, but installed with the ability to profile, Myungsoo could pick out little things that had changed.

To start, Sungyeol actually got up before he even got a chance to knock on his door. Myungsoo noticed he now took a longer time responding to Myungsoo. They weren't big changes, but they were changes nonetheless.

Sungyeol parked his car in front of an apartment building and he idled. He didn't feel like stepping out into the frosty, 6 AM wind, but he had a job to do. Myungsoo's hard stare on him was probably quite a push for him to get out of the car.

"Why are you staring at me?" he turned to Myungsoo on the passenger seat, his eyes shining even in the dark.

"Am I?" Myungsoo kept his eyes on Sungyeol.

"You are."

Sungyeol heard him sigh, and the sound of the seat belt being released from the buckle.

"I think we need to talk." It almost came out as a question, if Sungyeol hadn't remember how important this was.

"Now?"

Sungyeol looked to the left, where a bunch of uniformed cops were talking, some going in and out of the crime scene. Probably not the best time.

"Maybe after this."

Myungsoo nodded slowly, before blurting out, "I really liked that feeling." His hand went to his lap, plucking out imaginary threads when Sungyeol threw him a questioning look. "When you kissed me." Thinking it was embarrassing enough for him, Myungsoo didn't know what happened that made him actually say it.

Sungyeol didn't answer, and Myungsoo somehow took that as a sign to talk further.

"I wasn't made with that specific feeling," Myungsoo bit the inside of his cheeks. "It was all just a bunch of feelings shook together inside a container." He inhaled deeply before lifting up his head, looking straight at Sungyeol's eyes. "But I like it the best out of all the feelings I've been installed with."

He was met with silence, and Myungsoo wondered whether he had said something wrong. He was going to ask, but Sungyeol opened his mouth to take a deep breath, seeming as if all had finally dawned on him. Myungsoo waited with bated breath for something Sungyeol had to say, but what he got was Sungyeol leaning over the hand brake towards Myungsoo to kiss him. Once, twice, this time Myungsoo didn't count.

When they parted, the first thing Sungyeol saw was Myungsoo's smile, so wide it made Sungyeol do the same.

"I guess we're also going to talk about this later," Myungsoo breathed, and Sungyeol chuckled.

"I guess so."

.

Myungsoo noticed small drops of blood on the emergency stairwell when Sungyeol was taking a call. He wanted to inform him, but the call seemed important enough for him to go out of the building.

So Myungsoo went by himself, tracking the droplets until they stopped on the fifth floor, where Myungsoo noticed a ladder tucked in a crack between two separate walls. An odd place to store a ladder, Myungsoo frowned. Feeling suspicious, he looked up at the ventilation shaft, x-ray vision switched on. As he walked along the corridor, all he saw was an empty shaft, before he got to the end.

Sungyeol called him as soon as Myungsoo hit the emergency button.

"What's going on? Where are you?" The shrill of the alarm was affecting Myungsoo's built-in handset, so he closed his ears, hoping it would tune it out.

"I'm on the fifth floor. There's a—" Doors began to open as tenants start filing out of their apartments, jogging in panic towards the emergency stairwell. Myungsoo began opening every closed door (because knocking would be useless), making sure everybody on the fifth floor was gone and talking to Sungyeol at the same time. "There's a bomb in here!"

After making sure he had cleared the fifth floor, he moved up to the sixth and last one.

"Get out of there!" Sungyeol was practically screaming in his ear. Too bad it was built-in, Myungsoo couldn't tear it off. "Bomb squad's on the way. You need to get out of there."

"I need to make sure everybody's safe," Myungsoo said as he hopped the last three stairs on the fourth floor.

"What is the time on the timer now?"

Myungsoo halted in front of an open, empty apartment. He didn't remember any timer on the bomb.

"No timer, it's a cellphone instead." Myungsoo tried to open a door, but couldn't, so he banged on it, yelling that whoever was in there need to get out right now.

"A remote-controlled bomb?" Myungsoo could sense panic in Sungyeol's voice and it started to affect him as he kept banging on the door. He considered kicking it down, but it all went away when the person finally opened the door, seeming like he had just gotten out of bed, before being ushered towards the emergency exit.

"Where are you?" Sungyeol's voice was in Myungsoo's ear again. Despite the apparent lack of composure, Myungsoo still found Sungyeol's voice soothing. "You need to hurry, that thing could blow up anytime."

As soon as Sungyeol said it, he was reminded of the first day he was assigned to Myungsoo, when he asked whether Myungsoo could blow up in his face. He now dreaded the fact that he questioned it.

"I'm not Flash, Sungyeol." Myungsoo ran along the corridor of the third floor. All empty, but he still had two other floors to check. Where the hell was the bomb squad?

"You need to hurry either way."

"Shut up, I can't concentrate."

Sungyeol did, and Myungsoo kind of regretted it.

"Sungyeol, talk."

"You told me to shut up." Myungsoo heard him talking to a few officers, before informing Myungsoo, "Bomb squad's here."

Myungsoo didn't even have time to nod as he kept running along corridors. He almost tripped over his own feet and he felt the need to tell Sungyeol that. Myungsoo pushed open the emergency exit door of the second floor and ran into the easily recognizable bomb squad. He informed them about the location of the bomb, before running into the first floor. "Hey, Sungyeol?"

"Yeah?"

It was the second last thing Myungsoo ever heard. The very last being the loud explosion of the bomb in the ventilation shaft of the fifth floor.

Outside, people were screaming and car alarms set off, but all Sungyeol could hear was ringing in his ears and it wouldn't go away. He slowly got up from the ground, his eyes not leaving the burning building with its glasses all shattered, even as Woohyun came and shook him like a ragdoll. Woohyun sounded like he was screaming from the top of a hill, and Sungyeol shrugged him away.

Among officers and paramedics running back and forth, Sungyeol looked down to check on his phone. His heart dropped when he saw that he had been disconnected from Myungsoo.

They never got to talk about it after all.


End file.
